


i. as above, so below

by asmaras



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-31
Updated: 2020-12-31
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:15:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 989
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28454469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asmaras/pseuds/asmaras
Summary: Pike has a special line in fatalism with a healthy dose of self-pity and he wears it well. It never weighs his shoulders down or ticks worry into his brow. It never seems to give him pause or snatch at his attention when the chips are down. It never, ever stops him from moving forward.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 13





	i. as above, so below

This is how it goes. **  
**

Pike has a special line in fatalism with a healthy dose of self-pity and he wears it well. It never weighs his shoulders down or ticks worry into his brow. It never seems to give him pause or snatch at his attention when the chips are down. It never, ever stops him from moving forward.

 _If you stop moving forward_ , his father used to say, _you’re dead in the water_.

Of course, Taylor Pike is gone and Chris has never placed much stock in the wispy words of dead men so sometimes, just sometimes, he is still and quiet.

That night is the shortest night of the longest day of his life. The Enterprise is in pieces, literally and figuratively. He’s spent the last five hours establishing comms with grieving parents who don’t even know they’re grieving yet and with each condolence, he feels his own grief eroding to give way to exhaustion. Number One tells him he looks like shit at the seventeenth hour and he doesn’t have the argument in him to respond.

“Do you think they made it?” Una’s voice is the loudest thing in the room because the rest of the noise has joined the backbeat of his heart where it’s bleeding breaking dying. _No, no, no, no,_ it sobs like a great weeping wound that tastes silver on the back of his tongue and stops him from saying anything else.

When Chris doesn’t answer, Una answers for him. “I think they made it.”

“Get some sleep, Number One.”

“Chris.”

He looks at her finally and recognizes for the first time that the blood and grime on her face is tear streaked. “I know,” he says, so quiet that he’s not even sure he says it aloud as he reaches to tuck his partner, his friend, his lamb for slaughter against his chest when she shakes. “I know.”

They’ll never speak about it after that but he’s not ashamed to admit to his personal log that he cries harder than he knew was possible.

As above, so below.

* * *

His greatest fault is his compassion. It makes him weak and mottled like an apple left on the tree too long. He is utterly unsentimental and places no value in the tangible but when he serves on the seventh eighth ninth tenth honor guard, it’s hard to not beg for an anchor. Cusimano’s mother yells at him until she’s sobbing while Chris comforts her in an attempt to reconcile that he can’t place Cusimano’s face and it’s only been a week. Polis’s sister served on the Enterprise under Chris three years before her brother and when he’s free, she joins him to watch the sun tracking across the sky.

“He knew the risks, Captain.” Dahlia is small and quiet and gentle, and when Chris looks at her, he sees nothing but rage behind red rimmed eyes. 

“I’m so sorry, Dee.”

“I’m not interested in apologies.” She looks at him too and they regard each other’s misery with careful consideration before she decides she’s satisfied with his guilt and he understands that she never will be. “Make sure this never happens again, Chris.”

“There are always going to be-”

“I said never again.”

He’s not too proud to take an order when it’s given to him.

As above, so below.

* * *

Chris’s brother Nathan is twelve years older than him so that means that he’s tapped on sadness. Their sister Ellen hasn’t had an emotion in thirty five years and that's worked out fine for her, so Nathan suggests that maybe Chris should take a page out of Spock’s book.

“They were kids, Nate,” Chris says. “They were my responsibility.”

“Hell, Christopher.” Nate is pacing around his living room in Couer d’Alene and Chris thinks with a nauseating heart swell that maybe he’ll take leave for Christmas. “They’re always going to be kids and they’re always going to be your responsibility.”

“You think I should suck it up.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Yeah, you did. You called me Christopher.”

Nate snorts a sound. “I’m not calling you Captain, jackass.”

Chris smiles for the first time in two months but he won’t mention that out loud.

As above, so below.

* * *

The Enterprise sits in the dry dock for nine weeks, five days, and twelve hours. They get their bridge back, get their crew, and get their orders, but even with a mission, Chris sees ghosts everywhere. He sees Michael in the solarium and sees the flash of Tilly’s hair around a corner and sees Saru limned in sunlight. He knows none of them are real, that they’re gone (he can’t bring himself to say dead anymore, as Spock has placed an immovable moratorium on speaking in absolutes which the irony of fails no one), and that he should really talk to that therapist but instead, he keeps his head down and gets to work.

His crew recovers because they’re better men and women than him. They stay busy in their quarters and their assignments, as if they can protect their ranks through sheer force of will alone, and despite his incessant attempts at remaining insular, they remind him every day that he is still respected, he is still trusted, and most importantly, he is still welcome. 

_My friends_ , he thinks as he watches them existing together in that tirelessly hopeful kind of way. _My family_.

As above, so below.

* * *

“I saw something.”

Chris is lost in thought when Spock steps into the ready room and the tone of his voice is enough to pull Chris’s attention completely. “I’m sorry?”

“I saw something,” Spock repeats. His face is passive as always but there’s a softness at the corner of his eyes that suggests a smile. “A signal, sir.”

The air rushes out of his lungs, out of the room, and back into his life. “They made it.”

“It would seem so, Captain.”

As above, so below.


End file.
